Man I haven't smoked weed in nearly two weeks now. Thank god for oral swab drug tests. It really is too bad, though, because I feel I'd appreciate this a lot more after a toke. Except the vocalist, even if I was high my opinion of him would remain the same. When he does quieter low-end melodic singing, it fits the music well, reminiscent of Acid Bath. Unfortunately, that vocal style comes out almost never. Most of the time he uses a glammy high-pitched tone which both feels off against the instrumentation and personally annoys me. Hey, I've shit on Bon Jovi many times here so you should be able to guess why (not that this singer is anywhere near as grating as Jon Bon Jovi). The last style used is traditional screams and squeals, which does fit well so I have little else to say about that.

Outside of the singer, this is pretty average stoner metal. Locking riffs, slow drums and fuzzy bass, everything you expected. I honestly find some of the more rhythmic, groovy attempts to be annoying, particularly the first track. Plus, three out of four songs here exceed 7 minutes and only The Devil's Clock justifies its mega long running time with its wonderful ending solo. The first two cuts could have could've easily been 4 or so minutes and all the better for it. Thankfully, the last track runs a normal duration, and thus leaves everything on a more positive note.

Yeah, not the best stoner stuff I've listened to. It was obnoxious trying to find this, so I may be being extra judgemental. Whatever.

Best Track: The Devil's Cock (yeah I made a typo and I'm leaving it in because I have the humor of a 5 year old)
Rating: 5/10 (the cock song is a strong 8)

__________________
The above post has a 50% chance of being useless. Potentially. Maybe.

Day 389: Death Peak by Clark (Album Choice: Wayward Vagabond and some other peoples)

Gonna kill some albums waiting for this delayed-ass plane. This I enjoy a lot more than Totems Flare. They're obviously nearly identical in terms of style but the songs here seem a lot more epic, for lack of a better term. Maybe theatrical? Or more emotionally resonant? Either way, this is good stuff with nary a boring moment, though the vocal samples in Catastrophe Anthem come off as a bit corny.

Fun fact, I listened to half of this album awaiting jury duty. Wait, that wasn't fun. Jury duty fucking sucks.

Best Track: Toss-up between Butterfly Prowler and Peak Magnetic (I keep typing Death Magnetic in random places and I think Lars is a Nazi)
Rating: 8.5/10

__________________
The above post has a 50% chance of being useless. Potentially. Maybe.

This is the soundtrack to the obscure DSiWare game Pop+ Solo. I used to get lost into that game, back when I was 12. All you did was pop bubbles, but it was really immersive and actually fun for scoring. Nobody has bought this soundtrack, which is a travesty because it's damn fine chillout music and it fit the water theme of the game.

Best Track: Splash Screen
Rating: 7/10

__________________
The above post has a 50% chance of being useless. Potentially. Maybe.

I love to rash on One Direction because they suck, they're blandly sugary and they're corporately soulless. However, I've heard a stupid amount about how surprisingly good and "mature" this album is.

I don't know what these people meant by "mature" but I hope they weren't talking about the lyrics. Garbage all across the board, horrible horrible horrible. The variance in arrangements here is nice though, as the grab-bag approach made for a few enjoyable tracks here and there, scattered throughout a bunch of bullshit. The "pretty" ballads mostly suck out of how bland they are, especially lyrically, whereas the more arena-esque songs seem to be taking on a glammy, sexual approach and mostly make you cringe, especially the deplorable Woman.

Not to harp only on the bad, I thoroughly enjoyed Carolina and Only Angel as dumb fun, and both Ever Since New York and the last track are actually enjoyable as pussyboy tracks. They're not fantastic, but they're definitely listenable. I also don't wanna deny that the man can sing and sing well. However, regarding songwriting, the rest of this album can go fuck itself. Better than One Direction, but that's like saying a yeast infection is better than late-stage syphilis. Great fucking job.

Best Track: Ever Since New York
Rating: 4/10

__________________
The above post has a 50% chance of being useless. Potentially. Maybe.

I recently revised my RYM to bump The Glow Pt. 2 down from a 5, because I practically never listen to it nowadays. It's still a 4.5, but I never cared for most of what this dude put out as Mount Eerie. And if you don't know the backstory to this album, go google it.

How the fuck am I supposed to review this album? Sheesh, this is an incredibly tough listen, in the... best way possible I suppose? What the hell is this? What are emotions? I'm a numb motherfucker man, and I just feel extra socially retarded trying to talk about this album. It's sad, which is obviously what Elverum was going for... What the hell how are you supposed to critique a release like this? Am I suppose to praise it because I enjoy his pain? Can I criticize the lack of rhymes or does that make me a callous asshole? I don't actually care about the lack of rhymes at times since it doesn't detract from the point of the music, I'm just trying to make a point. This is blatantly the most artist-personal contemporary release I've reviewed, and talking about this album just feels incredibly uncomfortable. I mean, the dude put this out for the masses to consume, clearly he wanted people to interpret it their own way.

...Fuck this I can't talk about this one at all. Based on that, you know it's good! Know that this is a good album, an incredibly painful one and a very sincere sounding one. And it's easily the best thing this guy has released since the aforementioned The Glow Pt. 2. Nobody should go through what this man has, but people will, and this is a good result of that... Wow that makes me sound like an asshole. I'm 3 fuckin months late.

...What am I doing with my life?

Best Track: My Chasm, maybe? Crow, maybe? Why the fuck does my personal favorite matter?
Rating: 8.5/10 (I'm assigning a rating to this? How can I do that? Why is this review almost completely questions?)

__________________
The above post has a 50% chance of being useless. Potentially. Maybe.

I've bumped Tempel, Becoming X and Prom King all to 10s due to the sheer number of times I've played them, so congrats to noname219 and MixMasterLar.

Ever fall in love with an album within 30 seconds? This is definitely a case of that. As a Brainiac megafan, this is the exact kinda shit I like to hear. They're not quite as unhinged or creative as Tim Taylor was, but they do what they do, acidic noise rock, very very well. It can get samey, but in this case hearing more of the same is only a very good thing and it's a pretty short album anyways.

Highly, highly recommended. I haven't smoked weed in 32 days now.

Best Track: Stay Home Tonight
Rating: 9/10

__________________
The above post has a 50% chance of being useless. Potentially. Maybe.

Day 395: Pregnant Babies Pregnant With Pregnant Babies by Fat Worm of Error

These guys are from my college town, yet I doubt more than 50 people in my college know who they are and that's being generous.

I like a lot of experimental, free improvisation stuff like... uhh... okay I'm actually not that well-versed in this genre. But regardless, I enjoy some weird stuff and that means I'm more likely to enjoy this than the vast majority of the world population. Also, I'm sober right now. The first band to compare to this in my head is not Captain Beefheart like most of the internet says but instead Five Starcle Men, maybe because nobody else knows who those dudes are. However, Gomba Reject Ward Japan is now an all-time favorite of mine and this is far less enjoyable, maybe because at least FSM had some sense of rhythm and even occasionally melody to their songs. Also, their voices were nowhere near as annoying as this guy's.

For sure, a few tracks here have enjoyable, rhythmic bits or hilarious bits, but most of the time is simply too unstructured for my tastes. Oh well, I'll probably come back to it while high.

Best Track: 20' X 20' and Hand Of God
Rating: 5/10

__________________
The above post has a 50% chance of being useless. Potentially. Maybe.

This is another one of those bands that is supposedly right up my alley but I've never bothered listening to. Perhaps I should start with their more acclaimed early albums instead? Eh, fuck it.

This is a pretty album, but it's too samey for the most part, and I'm not fond of the dude's vocals (even Isn't Anything-era Kevin Shields sounded more pleasurable). They're too deep to be dreamy, especially on the unnecessarily drawn out closer Falling Ashes. The riffs and guitar tone are on point for the most part, though. All in all, a pretty middling album.

Best Track: Everyone Knows
Rating: 6/10

__________________
The above post has a 50% chance of being useless. Potentially. Maybe.

Your choice of username is fucking awful edgelord bullshit not because it's offensive (it's not) but because it's stupidly predictable and tired, that has no bearing on my expectations for this album though. Onto the music.

First track vaguely reminds me of M83 but a lot more aggressive and danceable. Both of those are good things. Oh wait, here's vocals. Yeah, these guys sound like shoegaze singers alright. Pretty obvious dynamic, but this is infinitely less sexy and more dancey than any shoegaze I've ever listened to, the former a negative, the latter a positive. What? I'm an ETard I suppose.

Actually, if Velocity is anything to go by, this has a strange similarity to that Beat Therapy album I listened to pretty recently, albeit a lot more chaotic and with an obvious band feel. I should add that album to RYM it's pretty good. The textures on this album are great, going beyond both most shoegaze albums and many IDM albums to give off a sense of real diversity.

Yeah this is a fire album not much else to say besides some tracks like International are straight up boring filler. Your username is still ass.

Best Track: Chocolate Matter
Rating: 8/10

__________________
The above post has a 50% chance of being useless. Potentially. Maybe.

I wrote this review minus this paragraph about 5 days ago and have been postponing it because I wanted to choose a standout rapper. Unfortunately for you, I'm lazy, so I didn't pick one.

I've been postponing this one for a long time now despite falling in love with STAR (or more accurately, Perf which isn't even on this album) because I wanted to be high for it and I had just started my T-break.

Those 50 days are now over.

The first 3 songs fuckin SMACK. No pun intended I swear. After that, there's a bit of a lull up until Fake which is fantastic, but the lull isn't TOO deep because the amount of variety here is at least respectable. On the other hand, the amount of pitch shifting is not (damn, Fake is still good but could've been so much better). The lo-fi atmosphere reminds me of Odd Future a bit, but it's not nearly as ass as Odd Future minus Earl and Frank. I still haven't listened to Flower Boy so being fair and stating that forthright, Tyler-Stans please piss off. The beats on these tracks are incredibly creative, plus points because I'm not very sure what the heck else I should say. The hooks are catchy, lyrically they're not all that great but that doesn't seem the point and they can at least rap decently. I'm here for the beats, dude, and they deliver. Surprisingly good consistently or maybe I'm just dumb rn. The all caps title scheme is also dumb.

Meh, I'm gonna return, that's all else I feel like saying.

NO WAIT, ask me about this years down the line (it took me three tries to correctly spell "line") and see if I still like these guys. Or this album because I have hopes SATURATION II will be better (hey man, PERF was better than any of these tracks, and it was just a 1-minute snippet!). For first album, very commendable but I feel it has a target audience age. So yeah.

Best Track: Cash
Rating: 8/10

__________________
The above post has a 50% chance of being useless. Potentially. Maybe.

Wow this is the big 400! That's... a rather boring milestone but whatever, I think this is a good album for a benchmark number.

I got rashed on Facebook today by randos bc I trashed Goblin. Sorry that I'm not 14 enough to enjoy lo-fi edgelord nonsense. But anyways, yeah, I reviewed Cherry Bomb a while ago and it basically exaggerated every quality of Tyler I don't like. You can imagine how surprised I was when everyone came out saying the new album was actually GOOD.

And... I mean, they were right. Despite sounding distinctively like Tyler this also flips over every trademark of his, which probably explains why this is so good. This isn't a juvenile, crass, bloated, lo-fi piece of dogshit, it's a gorgeously orchestrated, concise album about young gay love (Who Dat Boy sticks out like a thumb that requires amputation). The most offensive line is about the Boston bombings and my Bostonian friends make shitty jokes about that so I don't care, otherwise this is free of unnecessary button pushing. And yes, the featured are great and his flow has improved but that's absolutely not the important part. The three worst weaknesses of Tyler, production, restraint and lyrical content, are now his strengths! Well, not really restraint but at least this isn't a fuckin hour of him calling his dad a ******.

I believe I've mentioned another one of my qualms with this dude is that every album has 1-4 good songs but then he fills the rest of the album with filler horseshit. Does that fall under restraint? Whatever. Good album, I didn't say anything not said 1000 times already. I need to listen to The Internet.

Best Track: See You Again (talk about a pretty chorus)
Rating: 8/10

__________________
The above post has a 50% chance of being useless. Potentially. Maybe.

Day 401: Psychopomp by Japanese Breakfast (Album Choice: MyNameIsNothing)

Studying for a test to this. Is there supposed to be something particularly special about this music? I feel like I've heard this brand of dream pop like a thousand times before. The vocals, which are often the key ingredient to good dream pop, are adequate but they aren't pretty enough to make this outstanding. The instrumentals are everything you'd expect. I can't pick a favorite because this went in one ear and out the other.

I feel like this shouldn't count as a review, but it does. This was a short-ass album, I'm glad it didn't overstay its samey welcome.

Best Track: I don't got one
Rating: 5/10

__________________
The above post has a 50% chance of being useless. Potentially. Maybe.

Day 402: Music For Bondage Performance by Merzbow (Album Choice: velocifish)

I once fell asleep to Pulse Demon and I once played it during a trip. That's the brunt of my experience with the harsh noise master, a genre I should like and explore more than I actually do. I'm only listening to this one because I'm hoping real life follows suit.

Seishi Seppuku Kei almost made me think of The Illest Villains at first, but that changed rather quickly. This must have been a rather... moody porno. I'm trying to visuali- wait what the fuck no I'm heading to work.

This is basically what I wanted Coil to sound like. Dark, cold and creepy yet somehow beautiful in its soundscapes and atmospheres. Some parts linger on a bit too long (like the first few minutes of Ropes In Tears), but otherwise the airy spaces are captivating enough as it is, the extra noise and experimentation is mostly just a plus. Yeah, not much else to say, this could be a third shorter and better for it (cut the last track by a lot) but it's still GOOD.

Best Track: Seishi Seppuku Kei
Rating: 7/10

__________________
The above post has a 50% chance of being useless. Potentially. Maybe.

I seem to have downloaded this album onto my phone while blacked out. Seriously, I have no recollection of even researching this one. Apparently, it's vaportrap and 2017 so that's good, more recent music.

This is so horribly mediocre and lifeless, and most of these songs don't even end properly. Only the last 4 tracks are worth your time. Not atmospheric enough for vaporwave, too boring for my preferences in trap. Bad pre-work music.

Best Track: EYES WIDE SHUT
Rating: 4.5/10

__________________
The above post has a 50% chance of being useless. Potentially. Maybe.

These dudes are just great at writing hooks and making beats, and their chemistry together is phenomenal, they really feel like more than the sum of their parts. Compared to SATURATION I'm not sure the peaks are as high but they're far more cohesive in influences this time while still managing to make every track spund different. I dunno what else to say.

Fuck it, make it short so I can listen to something else.

Best Track: GUMMY but really almost this whole tape is catchy as fuck
Rsting: 9/10

__________________
The above post has a 50% chance of being useless. Potentially. Maybe.